Francis Baraan talking to Britney Spears

Britney telling Francis to meet her at the Betty Ford Clinic

1. What do blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe and novelist Virginia Woolf have in common? What about pop star Britney Spears and poet Sylvia Plath? Manic-depression, otherwise known as bipolar disorder, is a mood disorder punctuated by heavenly highs and hellish lows. It is both a gift and a curse. I am both blessed and afflicted with the condition and the illness. Hollywood A-Listers Catherine Zeta-Jones and Ben Stiller, former heads of state Prime Minster Winston Churchill, and even President Bill Clinton, have been reported to have it, too. What is it about bipolar disorder and greatness? The population of writers, artists, poets, political and business leaders have been said to be more than likely to be manic-depressive? Does this explain why I almost always feel great (except when I’m having a depressive episode)?  Will I be great, too, or is that just one of my delusions of grandeur?  I actually love being bipolar. Okay, I hate it sometimes. But I have to admit, the good things about being bipolar outweigh the bad.

2. Despite a plenitude of literature supporting the correlation between creativity and bipolar disorder, it still remains a main theme in many a scientific and literary writings. It puzzles and befuddles me, albeit being manic-depressive myself, how a person of extraordinary talent like Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath could take their own lives. Were they born at a wrong time? Could they have been saved from themselves had the proper medications been available during their time or would they have refused them? Britney Spears is lucky she was born during these times. She would have eaten her children alive has she lived during the times of Plath and Woolf. She would have given them a run for their money and drive them crazy, er, crazy-er.

3. Novelists, short story writers, poets, essayists, memoirists, scriptwriters, biographers, and playwrights — these creative writers — have to be creative, and have to go beyond the realm of “normal professional, journalistic, academic, or technical forms of literature (Wikipedia’s definition of creative writing)” —  and to go beyond the bounds of logical and scientific thinking.  Journalists’, academicians’, scientists’, and even bloggers’, writings are based on hard facts and supporting evidences, logic, numbers, formulas, and equations. Creative writers, on the other, have to make use of imagination, feelings, experiences, and memories, and make use of literary acrobatics in order to produce a work of art, a literary masterpiece produced from their fertile minds.  They don’t rely or base their writings on universal truths, postulates, theories, or hypotheses. I am more of the creative sort. I think the creative sort is superior to the scientific and logical-thinking writers. Don’t bite my head off, science writers and journalists. Jeez. It’s not my fault you weren’t born with the superior creative mind of the certifiable.

4. There are times when in one of my manic episodes, times when my entire being is wrapped up in a glorious wave of euphoria, I feel indestructibly superhuman. I can do anything and everything without going to sleep for days, my thoughts racing with a plethora of ideas that seem to spring out of nowhere like the brainchild of Zeus or one of the Greek gods. My thoughts crystallized, senses heightened, energy bottomlessed. See, I just made up a word. How creative can that get?

5. And at the other end of the mood spectrum, during my depressive episodes — times when I get deluged by an inexplicable surge of hopelessness, I become a shadow of my former indestructibly superhuman hyperself. I can’t do anything but get fraught with anxiety, riddled with guilt, and unable to concentrate. My mind and body horizontally languishing away in bed the whole day. What was once pleasurable would seem an automated routine of tedious tasks. What was once done out of passion and love would seem an exasperating and fruitless exercise. Labor of love turns into labor of hate. Passion turns into a stone of indifference. Life becomes the Angel of Death. I know, right?

6. So, what exactly is it about bipolar disorder that seems to almost always tend to produce creativity? Or is it the other way around? Is creativity the one that triggers a dormant bipolar disorder? Well, I really don’t know the whole truth. All I know is I wouldn’t love thinking, reading, and writing a much as I do now if I was just a normal, sane person. What pushes me to write, to be a prolific and accomplished writer, I believe, is this tinge of madness — this chemically imbalanced pendulum of manic-depression. To be a creative writer, one has to have at least a substantial amount of life experiences because different life experiences produce different kinds of emotions, memories, and insight necessary to bring to life convincing and relatable characters, and to tell a story as conceivably and believably life-like as possible. And empathy, the ability to not only feel what the other person is feeling, but to actually be the other person, I believe, is the most natural trait of a manic-depressive. You know why I know? Because I can feel it.

7. The interior world of a bipolar person is a hodgepodge of emotions, a veritable niagara of thoughts and feelings supplied by an overactive imagination and obsessive-compulsive behavior, exacerbated by real-life traumas, hopes, fantasies, and experiences. In short, we are self-absorbed, we love to live inside our heads, talk to ourselves, try out different personalities, and pretend to God, an English lord, a mad scientist, a celebrated author, or one of our characters in our book because there is so much going on in our head it’s practically a world within a world within a world. A universe of worlds! Oh,  I’m telling you, it’s an asylum of characters and plots inside my genius skull. If you had half my brain, you would realize that. But I guess only a few people are as gifted as me — or cursed — depending on how you look at it. Alright, let’s just go with gifted, then.

8. Oh, I could go on and on and on and on. The question is, can you handle it? Hmmm. I thought so. But hey, if Britney Spears is up for a lovely chat, I’d be more than willing to discuss with her our future accommodations at the Betty Ford Clinic. Britney, if you’re reading this, call me? Oh, I forget. You don’t read. Okay, to the agent or publicist of Britney, you know what to do.

9. Just like the Author Profile and Book Review series in this blog, this Racing Thoughts Of A Creative Writer No. 1 post is the first in a series of my opinions, thoughts, and views about books, writing, politics, business, bipolar disorder, films, and entertainment. This will be a collection of my reflections, essays, and creative musings. This is a literary blog but it doesn’t have to be all that literary. I like to mix it up with things that are relevant to the times like “Is Obama Really A Muslim? If So, Does That Mean There Could Be A Fourth Lady?,” or “Is Piolo Pascual Really Gay? Because If He Is, What’s His Number?,” or “Is Hilary Clinton A Lesbian? If Yes, Did She Also Have An Affair With Monica Lewinsky?,” or “Why Are Catholics Born With Original Sin? Isn’t That Just A Bit Tad Unfair?” I have a lot of questions about everything and opinions on practically anything. So, if you’re reading this and following this blog, you are one lucky son of a fan, because you will be entitled to my opinion.

10. If you want to know my answers to the questions I asked on no. 9, how the hell should I know? I ask the questions around here, you give the answers. Capisce?

So, here’s the thing,

I am bipolar, so is Britney.

And if you follow this blog,

we’ll drive you crazy.

Hey, I just wrote a poem. Well, what do you know? I’m a poet, too! Take that, Sylvia Plath!

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Books About Bipolar Disorder:

1. I’m Not Crazy, Just Bipolar 2. Diary Of A Bipolar 3. A Brilliant Madness: Living With Manic-Depressive Illness 4. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods And Madness 5.Touched With Fire